Beyond the Roundels

For the Fic Commentary Meme, sovay asked for there was a darkness, call it solitude.

This was written back in 2012 after re-reading Joan Aiken's Midnight Is A Place, no doubt brought on by watching the 1970s ITV adaptation, but that isn't a patch on the book, even if it does have David Collings in.

It was a while ago, and I can't find the original version in my notebook, either, so I'm not sure how much I can remember at this distance, but it was a fic I had to write and felt pleased with, despite its obscurity.* (I don't know what use my notebooks are sometimes. This one has my Yuletide 2011 fic in and later my Yuletide 2012 fic, so you would think that something written in spring 2012 would be in it, but no. Also that entire notebook is almost wall to wall S&S. 0_o)

( there was a darkness, call it solitude )

I'm belatedly deciding to do the snowflake_challenge after all. Just as it's about to finish. (Why not?)

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

This is my second year doing this question, so I had a think how to go about it slightly differently, and came up with a sort of theme. I don't think it helps to explain, but I suppose these are all fics that I'm very curious as to what people make of them. Some of them have been understandably disregarded by the universe, one of them was for Yuletide, so it got read, but here they are. They are fics, of course, that I do still like (most of the time), or I wouldn't be putting them here:


A Tear the Sun Lets Fall (4540 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sapphire and Steel
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bronze & Copper (Sapphire & Steel)
Characters: Bronze (Sapphire and Steel), Copper (Sapphire and Steel), Iron (Sapphire & Steel)
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series, Community: hc_bingo, Elemental Weirdness
Summary: For once, Bronze is afraid, and something more than time has been broken.

I don't know how much sense this one makes, but it's Sapphire and Steel, so I was determined just to go ahead and do what I was doing without explanation. Which, when you're writing pre-series fic (by a couple of thousand years) involving non-canonical Elements (original characters, therefore, although I tend to forget that with Elements and think they're sort of just semi-canonical instead), is probably a little unwise. (At least it got me a bingo square for hc_bingo.)


Vigil (1246 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Measure for Measure - Shakespeare
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Isabella/Duke Vincentio
Characters: Isabella (Measure for Measure), Duke Vincentio
Summary: Isabella is a woman who may never be a nun; the Duke a man who is not in truth a monk. Stranger alliances have been made.

I wrote this as a Yuletide treat in 2012, because apparently I had much stronger thoughts and feelings about Measure for Measure than I realised, and also why - while definitely not in the romantic sense - the Duke and Isabella are not at all the strangest match made at the end. (Spoiler! This Shakespeare play contains multiple random marriages, most of which will make the audience wonder what the hell just happened. Whoops, sorry.)

there was a darkness, call it solitude (4470 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Midnight Is a Place - Joan Aiken, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Sequence - Joan Aiken
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Julian Oakapple/Denzil Murgatroyd
Characters: Julian Oakapple, Randolph Grimsby, Lucas Bell, Denzil Murgatroyd
Additional Tags: Angst, Snow
Summary: Julian Oakapple returns to Midnight Court for the first time in twenty years.

And if I write obscure and depressing fic for children's books, what do I expect? But I like this one still, even though it's older than the other two.

And also Intersection - one of my 100 Element Prompts fics, the nearest I'm probably likely to get to a sex scene (though given that it involves Silver, I wouldn't swear that's what happens by any means!). But pretty scary for me to write, even so. (Actually, Intersection and Vigil sort of coincided and one enabled me to write the other, which is a little weird.)

(Probably, in this vague category in my head I'm drawing these fics from, the purest examples would be Trick of the Light (The Lining Is Silver Remix) and Grief, Observed, my Susan (Narnia) fic, but I feel the universe answered my curiosity about those two quite satisfactorily already.)

(Hmm, in a rec-your-own-fanwork post, is it wise just to emphasise your weirdness and obscurity again? Oh, well... ;-p)

The YA/Children's Book fanfic exchange The Exchange at Fic Corner is live! I have barely poked about in it yet, but everything I have so much as looked at seems excellent, so you should go and have a read if you like any of the 100+ children's books & series that have been written for. (Chalet School, Narnia, Harry Potter, Diana Wynne Jones and many more!)

I'm just recovering from the shock of it not being anonymous (I don't pay enough attention to stuff), as I was so low about everything, I wouldn't have written any treats if I'd realised, and so had a shaky moment on seeing everything all out in the open already. (Anonymity feels so much safer right now.) However, I've recovered a bit now and am sure soon I'll have more recs. In the meantime, I have this very awesome fic written for me in Midnight Is A Place! I don't think it requires much knowledge of the source to enjoy, either. It has music and storytelling and Anna-Marie's complicated plan involving frogs, and feels very right for an Aiken fic, so it's wonderful:

The Curse of the Blue-Eyed Tiger (2707 words) by vanillafluffy
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Midnight Is a Place - Joan Aiken
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Anna-Marie Murgatroyd, Lucas Bell, Julian Oakapple
Additional Tags: Found Family
Summary:

Anna-Marie's new friend stirs up unhappy memories for Lucas.

So, that is a thing that was well worth the wait. (I've known I had a MiaP fic since last weekend and it has been very hard being patient and counting down the days through a rather miserable week.)

Here's another long overdue post: some things I have made but never posted here. (I'm like the opposite of one of those people who will only post to their own LJ. I scatter things about the place and get too tired to put them here as well. Or they're so obscure that few people would be interested. So, you know, you shouldn't get too excited at this point).

They weren't all recent, I should add. One of them I finished a year ago, and then buried and the rest are all somewhere in between.

( Sandcastles, S&S ficlet )

( DW/Fire & Hemlock Fic )

( Midnight is A Place fic )

( B7/S&S crossover fic )

( And a fanvid - various )

Apologies for the mass posting, but I think that really is it. \o/

The full set of icons made for naarmamo (minus only the icons that were made as specific requests, and the Big Finish ones, which will follow shortly). It does include some extras and alternates not posted elsewhere. (Gosh. I know. Heh.) A fairly random mix of sources, as follows:

1-5 The Way We Live Now
6-9 Northanger Abbey (BBC 1986)
10-12 Seaside penguins
13-16 North & South) (BBC)
17-26 Text icons from Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce
28-30 Dungeons & Dragons (Cartoon)
31-33 Elizabeth R
34-37 Life
38 Inkheart
39-40 I Capture the Castle
41-46 Doctor Who (Classic)
47-48 Buffy the Vampire Slayer
49-53 Spooks/MI-5
54-57 Sapphire & Steel
58-59 Red Dwarf
60-66 Blake's 7
67-72 The West Wing
73-74 Press Gang
75-76 Jenna Russell
77-86 The House of Eliott
87-88 The Four Musketeers
89-91 Midnight Is A Place (1977/78 ITV)

Teasers:



( Icons here )